


the virtuous among us

by Experimental



Category: Gilgamesh (Anime)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Gothic, M/M, Philosophy, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-05
Updated: 2007-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-13 06:51:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experimental/pseuds/Experimental
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hours pass slowly in the old mansion while waiting for the Professor's children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the virtuous among us

_viii_

The seagulls came to him though the water was far away. Among the crows who inhabited these urban forests, mixing white among their black, they vied for the popcorn scattered on the ground of the cold, winter garden. Their piercing cries carried within them their own melody that swelled in response to the airy caws of the crows, like the choir of an Orthodox church trying to keep itself awake. To anyone else, a cacophony; but to Octo, the symphony was forming itself, unfolding itself in his mind, never the same, never repeating, yet obeying its own inherent pattern. Creation's leitmotif.

Arms encircled him from behind and held him close, one across his collarbones, the other sliding beneath his arm to cross his chest. Their blackness melted into that which clothed him and covered the Sanskrit pattern of white on his breast. Those arms held him as though begging him to guess whom they belong to, but he did not need to guess. Sex's warm breath tickled his ear as he said into it,

"For a minute there, you looked like Saint Francis out here all by yourself, preaching to the birds."

Their shadows were small on the gravel walk in the mansion's garden, faint under the clouds drifting in beneath the Sheltering Sky, gathering thick over the city and spelling rain. "You like those gulls a lot," Sex whispered, sending little shivers down Octo's spine. "Don't you? It seems like I always see you feeding them."

"You always see Francis depicted in the garden surrounded by songbirds and sparrows and doves—all the woodland animals pleasing to the senses, like something out of a Disney cartoon—when in fact he was really preaching to the crows and the gulls and the carrion birds. All the unclean animals."

Sex hummed against him like he wasn't really paying attention. He brushed his lips and nose against the back of Octo's neck, nuzzling the knot of cervical vertebrae at the nape, tracing beneath his hair the top of the mark that was visible above his collar.

Octo dropped his voice to a murmur.

"Even the unclean animals have a place in the Kingdom. These gulls . . . us . . . what's the difference? We are them and they are us. The unfortunate, the downtrodden, the outcast . . . the fallen among us are the blessed. To them will the glory be given."

"Is that what you preach to your birds?"

Octo could feel Sex's low voice vibrating in his vertebrae, rippling in waves down the serpent of his spine to its base, to the house of Kundalini.

"No. It is they who are preaching to me." He closed his eyes and leaned back against Sex. "They're singing to us. Can't you hear their music? It's the song of life itself."

When he let all other sensations melt away, their melody coalesced clear enough for him to hum. _The Professor. . . ._ The Professor was humming this to him from within everything—the birds, the woods, the foundation of this house, and Sex's beating heart—giving him this song to sing, this eternal, ever-changing song. He was always in communication with the listener.

Sex was listening. He gasped silently against the back of Octo's neck, and stiffened against Octo's backside.

And Octo smiled to himself. Even this—this warm flood of chemicals from the brain that made their cochlea hum, their vision swim, trickling down through their bodies like black notes spattering on a white page—like static tickling the skin and radiating from his epicenter, where Sex was pressing against him through four layers of heavy, black fabric, vibrating the very fabric of their existence, the delicate equilibrium of their being—even this was given them by the Professor, as the gods taught man pleasure.

He folded over the top of the paper bag of stale popcorn from which he had been feeding the birds, rolled it down, and turned in Sex's arms. As those arms slipped to a lower handhold, Octo touched the side of the pale, cherubic face to which Sex's wild red hair clung so stubbornly, tilted his head, and softly touched his lips to Sex's, as though in benediction.

There must have been something profane and at the same time pious in it, for Sex's small sigh against his mouth carried the yearning as much of a worshiper as a lover. He leaned forward to take something more, and wound up embracing only air.

The birds, startled and most of their feed eaten, scattered in a flurry of beating wings, their cries as though chastising Sex for their offense. He glared back at them out of the corner of his eye.

"I'm going in," Octo's soft voice reached him clearly through their din, as though he had not moved at all.

And Sex turned to look where Octo stood waiting for him at the mansion door, at the end of the walk. At the parlor window not far to the side of him, Novem's pale figure, half in shade and half in the filtered light of morning, was watching him still and silent and unblinking as a china doll in a shop display.

From the doorway, Octo caught the lopsided smile that tugged at Sex's full lips, while his gentle gray eyes, as gray as the distant rainclouds reflected in the Sheltering Sky above, hardened with an unspoken challenge, or perhaps an invitation, for the third member of their party.

Novem just turned away from the window, retreating into the dim of the house.

* * *

The hours of the morning passed slowly. There were no chimes from the grandfather clock in the dark hallway to mark them; it had long ago fallen silent.

The curtains on the parlor windows were thrown open to let in the sunlight that pierced and shimmered in the Sheltering Sky. Novem, ever on the look-out, leaned against the sill to bathe in its glow, like a lizard soaking up the warmth and storing it for later.

Octo found a seat on the davenport beside Sex, who was nursing a warm freezer pop, red sugar-water like blood in the plastic tube, but not before he set a tray on the coffee table. On it, an apple, a paring knife, and three Styrofoam cups which he filled with black tea from a copper and steel pot, one at a time, with measured slowness, as though it were the only way to get the just amount in each one. He set the first one in front of Sex, the second on the side of the table opposite him. The third he took for himself.

An old CRT gramophone they had found in an upstairs room was playing a record softly. Beethoven's fifth piano concerto, "The Emperor". It took them back to Uruk, to the ruins of a living god's tomb within the cradle of civilization; and back sixteen years, before they were born, when they heard the Professor playing it for them from within Mother's womb. But they had only learned that song had a name later, because the Professor never told them what it was in the few times—the precious few times—he had played it for them again since X,X.

The sweeping melody rippled now through the dusty air of the old mansion in waves, like an epiphany, or a premonition, lending temporary form to the formless, resonating within even the corpses of giant salamander clones where they slept in their cylinders, its notes falling upon the three in the parlor like raindrops darkening the pavement and quickly fading away. The needle and the record were old, however, and every now and then a speck of dust or a hairline scratch would make a quiet pop, an imperfection within analog life, lamentable in its disruption of the whole. The Professor always preferred vinyl records, but he did so for the range. He had never warned them that even a recording, like so many things, degraded with time and neglect.

With one arm flung over the sofa's back—as though bracing himself—Octo lifted his cup to his lips and drank its contents hot. His sips were measured but not in the least tentative. He did not care that it burned his tongue. He was not a masochist, as Sex no doubt thought as he watched Octo curiously out of the corner of his eye, behind the steam that rose over Octo and purified him like incense; but he did yearn to feel something tangible.

And of that weren't they all in some way guilty?

"When are those birds of yours going to sing a song of righteousness?" Sex asked him as he continued to stare.

He asked it as he had done a dozen times before, formulaic, like the disciple in some Socratic parable. Octo looked up at Novem, who nodded back. They all knew the answer to that.

"When the Professor wills it."

For now, however, they would stay in this abandoned house and wait for the flood that would bring them his children. That was what they were sent to do, nothing more. As the Professor also taught them: everything in its due time.

Novem stepped away from the window and pulled a chair up to the coffee table where his cup of tea sat slowly growing cold. He took up the apple and knife and began paring it into six perfect pieces, peeling back and forking the skin to create six little white and dappled-red rabbits. He stared intently at his work as he cut. The sound of the knife slicing through the crisp flesh was like the sound of footprints in fresh snow.

* * *

 _vi_

A scraping keeping metallic, metronomic time woke Sex from his daydreams with a wince.

The record had ceased to play some time ago, the tea in his cup on the coffee table grown cold. He rose from the davenport and went to investigate, finding Octo the noise's culprit, raking from the gravel path the stubborn brown leaves the wind last night had loosened from the oaks. His birds were nowhere to be seen, but there was still something about Octo that was reminiscent of a man of the cloth. If any passersby were to see him raking the walk, in these heavy black clothes, that was what they would surely think. All the more so if they heard him speak, this strange boy with devil-intense eyes so persuasive and saintly of tongue.

Sex put himself into one of the tall oak trees over where Octo worked, and there he sat silently perched, watching the other, a crow balanced on some high and precarious bough. A smile curved his lips upward as he thought back to their play that had often started in much the same manner as this, and just the memory awakened in every inch of him that giddy tingle of anticipation. The spirited one-up-manship, the wonderful agony of his hard-on as they grappled, and the flooding release of power against power as they forced themselves upon this aloof material world together, shattering all her rigid laws with the abomination of their flesh. . . .

It was only a shame they could not risk that manner of diversion here, not without calling attention to themselves with the fallout. Not this deep in among the masses.

Instead he made the leaves before Octo's feet stir. They rose into the air and twisted round each other in a gentle whirlwind, dancing, scraping against each other, dry and stiff and brittle, stirring up a slight smell of rot before gently touching back down. The wind was dead so Octo stopped and looked up.

He smiled when he recognized Sex in the branches of the tree, and that was Sex's cue to come down.

"You don't have to do that, you know," he said as he reappeared at Octo's side. "No one lives here anymore. And we won't be here long enough to care."

They were just passing through, after all.

"You're missing the point," Octo told him.

"Oh? Tell me then. What's the point?"

But Octo just smiled enigmatically at him. He didn't give a reason. Just tapped the side of his head as though he had taken a vow of silence, and that was reason enough.

Physical discipline cultivates mental solace.

He returned to his raking, so Sex leaned closer and looked up into Octo's face. And, he figured, while they were on the subject:

"Hey. . . . Do you know what I'm thinking right now?"

The rake went still in Octo's hands. The priestly expression of peace and severe inner chastity on his face faltered just slightly. Only the singular skip in his heart rhythm like a jitter on a record that Sex could feel somehow harmonizing in his own gut gave him away.

Yes, Octo did know. Or else he caught the quick spark in Sex's otherwise gentle gray eyes, like lightning flashing behind the storm clouds. But then, either way, it probably wasn't too hard to guess.

He left the rake lying across the gravel walk as the sky opened up and the rain came down.

* * *

Dust smothered the sound of their damp footsteps on the naked floorboards, and rose in an invisible cloud around Sex as he pirouetted and threw himself down on the old white sheet that had been draped over the bed. He wasn't expecting it and the fine particles made his nose itch. He made a face.

Octo smiled. He didn't make a sound but Sex knew the other boy was laughing at him inside, saying a silent "serves you right" in his mind.

The smile chased the cold from his eyes and Sex just couldn't sit still. He chuckled, and leaped to his feet like a dog to a whistle, cradling Octo's head in his hands as he kissed his lips. The dust was like ash on Octo's chocolate hair, on his white face, but his eyes were alive and bright and clear, clear blue, like the photographs of the atmosphere behind the Sheltering Sky that still existed in old books.

"Preach to me with your body," Sex whispered against his lips, "not with your tongue," leaving eager gray handprints on Octo's coat, on the hips of his trousers, "unless, of course, you can put it to better use."

Octo just pushed him back down onto the bed, crawling over Sex to pin him to the mattress like a frog for dissection, like a sacrifice for crucifixion. "Shut your filthy mouth," he said, and before Sex could utter a retort Octo was doing it for him, that tongue Sex spoke of stopping the taunts that had been on the tip of his.

Filthy, he said. What a joke.

In this upside-down, inside-out world they were delivered into, it was they who were the clean ones, so untouchably clean they passed right through the taint of these times like a bullet through a flock of Octo's gulls—they through whose veins ran the blood of a god, these manufactured angelings, saints born of sin but saints nonetheless, whom the Professor had entrusted with this mission to brave the corruption and pollution of a flawed material sphere that had the hubris to call _them_ abominations, terrorists, freaks of nature. Clones. Devils.

Well, fuck them, was what he said to that. Fuck them all, it is _our_ perfection that will save humanity from its damned, doomed nature—if need be, one neutralized atom at a time.

The warm bow of Octo's thighs on either side of Sex when he sat back was divine symmetry, and the taut, creamy plane of his belly as Sex pushed his black coat up inch by inch against the unforgiving buckles, rising with each rush of breath, each heartbeat's surge of blood that Sex could feel pounding against his own erection through their clothes, sent him reeling, sinking, drowning in a blasphemous salvation.

Was this what Octo meant when he called them fallen?

But if that were so, he relished this state of disgrace.

If that were so, it wouldn't be long now until the heavens descended to meet them, these moonchildren sixteen years out of the apocalypse, who tugged at the buckles that restrained their true natures in these pitch-dark shells, like cicadas whose baby carapaces had grown too tight, just so they could remember for a little while what it tasted like on one another's naked skin, that placental heaven, on their lips, in the cherry-sugar on Sex's tongue, the bitter tea on Octo's—struggling in vain until they joined with that reflection in the looking glass above their heads to recapture the very moment of that big bang that birthed them, catching its radioactive echoes in the coiling in the viscera of liquid pleasure. . . .

"Fuck . . ." Octo moaned as he bent over Sex's ear.

And Sex, one hand down the back of Octo's trousers—deep down the back of his trousers—had to grin, because, filthy or not, rarely was Octo _so_ , in his opinion, eloquent.

* * *

 _ix_

They were bulbous and grotesque things, the giant salamanders.

And further proof that the three of them had arrived to the right place. Had the Professor known, Novem wondered, that through his guidance they would be led to the very house of the man who had made them from the flesh of a dead god-king—the very man whom they might, under other circumstances, have called Father—or God, like He who had made the first men in His image out of lifeless clay?

No doubt he had.

No doubt he had guided them here with that very purpose, in the song of the birds at their morning feed, in the playing of that old gramophone, the buzzing in the tremulous key of A of the cathode ray tube inside of it, so that Novem might now gaze upon these poor beasts for himself and know them by their lot numbers—these creatures who never knew an existence outside their canisters, never woke from their dreamless slumber, but were nevertheless his brethren. Like himself, a testament to man's pride, man's lust for immortality and an escape from the decay of the flesh into some flesh more godly, forever suspended inside the pillars of this nave of this temple to technological ingenuity; and silent witness to the lean years since that distant 10 October when said ingenuity, like the salamanders' hearts, had failed altogether, and whence Novem had taken his first breath outside the womb.

The glass was cold to the touch. Dust smeared across it beneath Novem's hand. He did not grieve for these animals; he harbored for them no pity; but they did awaken something in him, something quietly desperate and defiant.

Something he did not quite understand. Something for which he had no precedent, no context.

The floorboards creaked above his head, passing footsteps rattling a dead chandelier, and he looked up. They were at it again, he surmised, his colleagues. But Novem could not blame them for finding some way to make the day pass more quickly into night.

He climbed the stairs after them.

Down dark and lifeless halls, he passed one after another the abandoned rooms of shrouded furniture and cold, empty hearths, and the gray skeletons of looted electronics, their viscera of wires ripped brutally out of their wall sockets and strewn about the floors—ripped out of rows upon rows of decaying books stacked to the crown molding like some mausoleum to a more enlightened prehistory, moldering beneath the dead light fixtures that listed from ceilings distended and stained by the rain water, from upholstered walls peeling back from their glue and staples—and precious hardwoods split and faded under their veneers of cobwebs, and what wan light was focused through the cracks in the musty curtains.

And all of it, all these remains of a time long dead, aroused in him . . . what?

Sorrow?

No, he would not call it that. It was more personal, more internal. More selfish. Not fear, surely; it lacked that essential sense of urgency. Perhaps it could have been called a feeling of nostalgia, a quiet yearning for the comforts of the flesh, and the satisfaction of the synapse, that these ruins represented: the beauty that existed in the drifting of music through a space, or the secret ecstasy of its swirling in the inner ear; the sweetness of a hot drink flowing over the tongue, or a fire in the fireplace.

It was only natural to want to pursue these things, and hold on tightly to them once found. After all, as the Professor often reminded them, Gilgamesh may not have been human, not completely, but they were mortal, and being mortal were alive. They were given human form that they may use it as such, as humans were wont to do.

They were given human thirsts, so that they may slake them, with things tangible and good.

Therein lay the meaning of this house, Novem thought, if a structure itself could be said to have one. It stood a monument to all those sins of this tremendous pride of man's that necessitated their righteous mission; and it was among those sins, scattered like so many kernels of corn upon the gravel walk, that they found those very, precious things upon which existence gained purpose.

Did that make theirs, then, a futile mission? Novem did not think so.

For that would mean that the struggle in his own body, the fine line of stability that separated the antimatter of his nature from the matter of his environment, was an exercise in futility as well. And above all he could not accept that they had been conceived in such sublime perfection as this for nothing.

* * *

They were naked as newborn babes when Novem found them, wrapped in one another's arms, Octo between Sex's legs, and breathless laughter on their traveling lips not so unlike when they had wrestled innocently together in Uruk.

Without shame, and in nothing but the pursuit of pure pleasure.

"About time you joined us," Sex drawled when he caught Novem watching them from the doorway, like when he had caught the two of them in the yard that morning. The languid parting of his pouty lips, the quick rise and fall of his chest, was mesmerizing enough without need of words, as was the daring intensity of Octo's blue eyes as he sat back on his heels to make a space, and reveal to Novem all the symmetrical beauty of their forms which he knew as intimately as his own.

The mattress dipped beneath the new weight as Novem joined them, and they gravitated toward his pull. Sex pushed himself up onto an elbow, following with that stormcloud gaze the progress of his own fingers as they traced Novem's inseam up underneath his coattails, around and over the bulge in the crotch to the buckles on the hip of his trousers; while Octo pressed warm against Novem's back, and pulled loose those at his waist, up his side, fuck it, diving deep underneath the mark over his heart to stroke bare skin while his lips found Novem's inclined throat beneath his flaxen hair; his teeth, Novem's jaw; his tongue, the spiral of Novem's ear. . . .

Those thick, black trappings of his seemed altogether such a burden to Novem. So he shrugged them out of sight and out of mind like an old skin, so that Octo's hand might slide unhindered up the pillar of his throat to turn his head, and Sex's. . . .

Novem gasped into Octo's mouth, drinking in breath sweet as the apple they had shared earlier, as Sex's fingers, even sweeter, wrapped themselves around the shaft of his cock. Through half-open eyes and the pale fringe of his hair Novem watched Sex stroke him like in a dream, and did not miss the meaning in that little pink flick of tongue across Sex's teeth, the nasty hint of a smile on his angelic face as he shifted farther back onto the mattress.

No sooner had Novem settled his elbow against the pillow than Sex turned and took him into his mouth; and heaven-sent was the ignition of neurons under his tongue, the wet heat between his lips. Novem's fingers curled in Sex's fiery hair while Octo's curled between his thighs. And when Octo sat up on his knees and slid into Sex like he were sliding into a girl, the rolling of Sex's hips in his lap beckoned Novem's gaze down, to Sex's own cock lying swollen and untouched across the fluttering plain of his stomach, and the Sanskrit mark written into his skin, curving down like a scythe set to harvest the root of his erection.

Novem rose to take its weight in hand, Sex arcing up into his touch in response as he worked his shoulders between Novem's knees, pushing himself farther onto Octo whose ragged breaths Novem could just feel stir the hair on his crown as Sex opened his throat and took Novem's cock in deep.

Novem exhaled against his stomach as the jolt of pleasure swept like rapid fire up his spine and down through every limb. He brushed his lips over the mark in Sex's skin, sweeping the tip of his tongue over its tendrils, tasting the salty-sweet sweat on his skin, the premonitory scent of pheromones and semen, desire, heady in his nostrils; and the circuit was completed in the shiver of Sex beneath him, the wonderful vibrations of his moan through Novem's cock, the tightening of his fingers on Novem's hips, just as Octo gripped his thighs while he rolled into Sex like steady lapping waves.

The Professor had preached to him once of the virtue of release, the divine connection that existed between the synapse and the skin. So Novem recalled with each measured beat of his thumb across Sex's glans, like the silent prayers of a worshiper counting beads—in the rhythmic pounding of Sex's blood flowing straight in his veins that made his flesh so hard, so velvety hot over Novem's lips and teeth. With his fingertips Novem traced the curve of the small of Sex's back, following the cleft of his buttocks to where Octo was pushing into him. Sex groaned beneath him at that touch, and Octo just shivered and tangled his own fingers in Novem's hair—as a warning or encouragement, Novem wasn't sure he knew the difference. He thrust harder into Sex, his breaths coming slow and deep; but Octo's eyes when Novem glanced up were watching him and everything he did to Sex, as though it were his cock beneath Novem's lips.

Novem wrapped an arm around his waist, feeling Octo hiss in a breath through his teeth through the vicarious catch in Sex's throat—Sex who was drinking him into such a state of intoxication he had to hold onto something, had to brace himself against the dip in the small of Octo's back, leaving an apologetic kiss on the side of Sex's length to press his lips, catch his breath against the cooling sweat on Octo's warm stomach. Octo's fingers tightened in his hair while Novem's grip tightened on both of them until Sex shuddered and came under Novem's hand, anointing his own belly, swallowing so hard around Novem he couldn't help himself, and neither could Octo, they could only let their eyes fall closed and, _oh_ , Novem was gasping silent exaltations against Octo's belly as they both came hard inside Sex, like some movement's climax, holding that final chord for three, four, five good, hard thrusts of Octo's hips until there just wasn't anything left in any of them except the deafening, white roar of blood pounding in their ears and their own spent breaths.

When the haze of afterglow began to clear from his mind, Novem found himself resting against Sex's hip, the other boy's fingers absently caressing the dampened hair back from his temple while Novem's limbs lay across him too heavy and tired to move, Octo's breath tickling the smooth skin of his backside. The shockwaves of their orgasm, that reminded him so strongly of that distant singularity of their awakening, if only a brief and imperfect simulation, were so like the ripples on the surface of a pond, growing slower and weaker with each new repetition, fading into some achingly ephemeral memory that even the slight soreness of sensitive flesh could not suffice.

All Novem could do now was just feel with masochistic fascination its slipping slowly out of his grasp, like the gradual cooling of the sweat on Sex's skin beneath his cheek—just watch the ejaculate dry a new pattern upon Sex's belly while their breathing slowed and the shadows of raindrops running down the window pane washed their bodies in the waning light.

Night came early under the storm clouds, but they could feel it tingling like static on their skin, the steady trickling, drippling of time.

It vibrated within their pressing bodies like a tuning fork, drifting through one to permeate the other, like heart rhythms syncopating, a gull ululating as it lifted into an updraft somewhere in the distance, so faint they could barely hold its frequency long enough to hum it.

Octo raised his head from Novem's hip and turned to look at him, already alert and eager, and Novem could read the revelation on his severe lips, behind his whispered, "The Professor. . . ."

Sex gasped and his hand went still on Novem's temple. Novem nodded once.

He was calling them.

* * *

 _the fallen_

They were children who had never seen the moonlight, never even looked at the moon with their own eyes. All they knew of it was through old movies and photographs in books, the same way they knew the daytime sky was blue. Nor did they ever know a dark night except over the deepest desert where there were no city lights to reflect, when one could almost swear he saw stars twinkling beyond the Sheltering Sky if he squinted just right.

On a stormy night like this, behind the ragged blanket of rain clouds, the Sheltering Sky still scintillated with the lights of the city around them like a crystal chandelier, or the surface of a lake rippling with the last angled light of an eternal dusk, undulating inverted over their heads.

Like the crows of Octo's garden, the three perched amid the phallic skyscrapers of the city, watching over the darkened ruins of some urban war zone tucked among towering corporate fortresses where even the orange halogen streetlights struggled to stay lit. Where water pooled deep in the gaping pot holes that scarred the upheaved pavement, and only the neon sign of some seedy establishment penetrated the darkness of the shadows where they crouched, buzzing, flashing sickly red and blue veins across their white skin, across their black clothes made slick and heavy by the rain.

Such was the Core Settlement, which exceeded all the greatness of ancient Babylon, and all its most heinous sins. She was a painted whore, the city, writhing beneath them in all her colorful fonts and figures promising infinite delights, beneath her veil of car exhaust belched from the underpasses and parking garages, the stench of noxious gases mingling with overcooked meat from a corner kiosk, opening her legs to those sorry enough to roam such a stormy night in each and every hostess bar or baccarat parlor, the same obnoxious rhythm pounding from between its doors.

The artificiality of it all, the eroticism of all its filth disgusted Octo, with his talk of latter-day devils, just as it made Sex itch in his flesh for action, as the city's buzz thrummed through their psyches like the intimate whispers of a lover, a two-faced delilah.

But it made them all three long in some way for the dry, musty innards of the old mansion in the ennui of their watching and waiting—for the warmth of a crackling fire in the fireplace, the halo-glow of so many candles decorating the mantel and every table top and pooling in their own pure white wax.

There, there was shelter from the storm.

There, the legion sins of this flawed human race were dead and harmless.

But as the raindrops fell upon the concrete ledge of an overpass pylon or a skyscraper rain spout, they heard in the pattern the same song that had been drummed out against the mansion's slate roof, and had pattered into the gravel walk from overflowing gutters, tapped out in the key of A like a child's fingers on a toy piano. Listen, Octo's eyes seemed to warn, and Sex was listening, and Novem was listening. In the hush of rain over the city were the echoes of the Deluge, drowning out the whine of sirens, or the caterwaul of a car alarm in some back alley, in reverse reverb.

Somewhere down there were the Professor's children. Their very natures called out to Gilgamesh, as they made their flight unknowingly in the direction of the old mansion.


End file.
